


plenitude

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, First Kiss, M/M, Pining, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Trope Subversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-08 00:26:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11070213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: There was nothing he could do about any of it, his own issue or Bones’s; these things just happened sometimes. The lack itself didn’t bother him. After all, he could handle a few funny, pitying looks from people who didn’t know the first thing about him. It was the niggling sensation that he was missing out onsomethingthat ninety-eight percent of humanity and seventy-six percent of the galaxy overall took for granted:thatbothered him.





	plenitude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shopfront](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/gifts).



The way Bones talked about it, having a soulmate was the worst possible blight upon a person’s life. “Damned things,” he’d say when he was feeling particularly sentimental or self-hating or plain bitter, like now, always while scrubbing his thumb back and forth across the ink-dark mark on his wrist, still as vibrant as the day he’d met her, the ex-wife, “put a target on your back like nothing else.”

Jim still wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that. And a request for clarification just couldn’t push its way past his teeth, got stuck in his throat when it ever got that far usually. This time it got as far as the tip of his tongue, so close. Jim was a man who wanted to know everything, but this was always the one thing he didn’t let himself have.

“You’re lucky, Jim,” he added sometimes, if he was feeling selfish, too, at least in Jim’s opinion. It was often accompanied by an appreciative, longing glance at Jim’s unmarred skin. Confusion always followed that sort of glance, confusion and a longing ache that wouldn’t fade for days, its own sort of mark. “You’ve got a choice.”

Most of the time, Jim clapped Bones on the shoulder, dug his thumb into the solid muscle that stretched across his scapula and topped up his glass with whatever brand of scotch Bones had liberated from Chekov’s never-ending stores of it. This time, he only refilled his own and drained a good portion of it with one swallow, his arm brushing against Bones’s as he raised and lowered the glass.

Even through multiple layers of fabric and too-brief contact, Bones’s body radiated comforting heat. Jim would curse him for that if he could.

“So you’ve said,” he answered, unusual. A fragile hoarseness gave his tone a deprecating quality that he could fully blame on the burn of the alcohol instead of the formless, directionless frustration that tingled under his skin. And though he might know the truth, he didn’t have to acknowledge it to Bones, not unless Bones asked.

Bones didn’t ask.

Under different circumstances, at any other time, Bones would’ve questioned him up and down the ship for sounding like that.

There was nothing he could do about any of it, his own issue or Bones’s; these things just happened sometimes. The lack itself didn’t bother him. After all, he could handle a few funny, pitying looks from people who didn’t know the first thing about him. It was the niggling sensation that he was missing out on _something_ that ninety-eight percent of humanity and seventy-six percent of the galaxy overall took for granted: _that_ bothered him.

They’d talked about it once, he and Bones had, and Bones had assured him he wasn’t missing out on anything. It was back at the Academy. And Jim had lost a boyfriend to the boyfriend’s newfound intended and Jim had been kind of pissed about it despite them both knowing from the moment they met that their relationship was merely a stopgap—at least for the boyfriend. The memory of it was worn now, the focus lost except for Bones’s part in it. At the time, he’d buried the sting of betrayal beneath his happiness on Allen’s behalf, but he’d only managed to hold onto it long enough to make it back to the dorms, back to Bones, who’d immediately asked what was wrong and offered to give Allen a piece of his mind when Jim spilled the whole thing to him. He’d appreciated the support then no less than he wished things could change now.

“Jim,” he’d said once the bluster of his affront had given way to sympathy, “you’ve got more than enough imagination to figure it out and you bury yourself in enough books that you probably got a better idea than most about how it is and if you’re worried about physiological differences, don’t. I know you’ve read the studies, too. It’s all just a lot of metaphysical bullshit. One of those fundamental rules of the universe that nobody understands and can’t pinpoint with the scientific method. It doesn’t make you _feel_ any different. There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s nothing special about these damned things. I reckon you wouldn’t want one if you had one.”

The poets Jim read said otherwise. The memoirists writing about how they didn’t find their soulmates until they were one-hundred and sixty, who’d been sure they’d be ’mateless forever, said otherwise, too. But maybe Bones was right. Jim had loved before, after all, and every time he found something new to wonder at no matter how short-lived the connection or how empty many people considered his assignations to be. The love written about in poems and novels wasn’t utterly foreign to him. Hell, he loved right now and most days it was the best decision he’d ever made. Jim loved and loved and loved and it was enough.

Bones was here, after all. And home was the _Enterprise_. With Jim. His soulmate was back in Georgia, trying to get along with someone else last Jim’d heard.

The sphere of ice in Jim’s drink _tinked_ against the thick wall of the glass surrounding it. Now empty, that ice spun easily around the bottom as Jim, fingers around the rim, moved the glass in a thoughtful, circular motion. It took a few tries to get the words out around the sudden dryness in his throat that made a desert of his mouth, but get them out he did. “You’re free, too, you know. It’s a big universe out there.”

“What’s the point?” Bones answered, staring down into his own glass before rolling his eyes and glancing up at the ceiling. Holding onto the counter before him, Bones stretched and leaned back into the empty space behind him, something he did every time he grew thoughtful. They met like this, in Jim’s quarters or Bones’s, just about every night, just the two of them. This, too, was enough for Jim. Even when Bones was despairing over an unchangeable past.

Jim turned slightly on his stool, his knee knocking against Bones’s. “You’re not lonely?”

Brow arching, Bones pursed his lips and gave Jim the gimlet eye he was so well known for inside the medical field and outside of it. Disdain filled the space between them, occupying the room like it was its own distinct entity. It could crowd out the pair of them if it wanted to. “Who has the time? And anyway, I’ve got you, don’t I? That’s been a damned sight better than all this soulmate business, I can tell you that much for nothin’.”

That much Jim trusted was true even if he also trusted that Bones didn’t know quite how much that meant to him. “I’m serious,” he said, cajoling, a bit teasing. In all their years together, this particular conversation had never progressed this far. Now that Jim was in for a penny…

Bones just snorted. And though Jim wanted to be annoyed at Bones’s nonchalance, he couldn’t be anything other than amused, his affection for his best friend too deep and sure to stumble under Bones’s cynicism. The worst of Bones’s impulses only ever struck glancing blows, could do no truly lasting damage. Luckily for Jim, the same was true in reverse. Otherwise they’d have been in a world of trouble long, long ago. “You mess up with your _soul_ mate, what chance is there with anyone else? People look at you differently. They don’t want to give you a shot and why should they? Soulmates are supposed to be sure things. You fail at that, you might as well fail at everything else, too. Maybe somebody should do a study debunking that crock of horse manure.”

“I don’t look at you differently,” Jim pointed out. It seemed important to speak the words while he was saying them. But once they were out, he wasn’t so sure. His stomach twisted up and his chest tightened and he knew he was making a mistake now, pushing things too far too fast like always.

The room seemed to shrink around him, everything suddenly too close as Bones stilled. And Bones wasn’t an economical guy in the slightest. Not ever. He threw words and motions around like they were the galaxy's best renewable resource. He didn’t _do_ stillness, not unless it was really, really important, at which point, he could give a statue a run for its money.

“Say again, Jim?” Bones’s voice took on a deceptively light quality, perfectly cordial and perfectly distant.

Jim hated it. He glanced past Bones to the viewport through which the blue, coruscating lights of the warp field through which they were travelling were visible. Though a snappy comeback waited to be spoken, this wasn’t the time for jokes. He did as Bones asked.

His voice didn’t crack in the repetition.

At least if it all went wrong, he thought, they’d have seen this through to the end and they’d never have to speak about it again. For a moment, Bones did nothing more than furrow his brow. His eyes fell to his hands, open on the counter, and he took a deep breath.

“You saying what I think you’re saying?”

Jim swallowed. “Yeah, Bones. I am.”

Bones tilted his head, considering. “Huh,” he said finally, pinching his lower lip between his thumb and index finger. Looking over at Jim, he smiled faintly, playful if Jim wanted to be optimistic. Jim tried not to take it as a good sign, but telling that to the rest of his body didn’t work too well. It hummed with barely concealed anticipation regardless. Every inch of him wanted to move forward, take Bones in his arms, kiss the sense right out of him. Bones’s eyes twinkled then and that did nothing to soothe Jim’s desires. “You don’t care that…?”

He lifted his wrist and twisted it this way and that in illustration.

“Not even a little bit,” Jim said, earnest.

“Okay.” And with that, Bones’s smile stretched wider than Jim’d ever seen it grow before. There were dimples from that smile and Jim couldn’t stop himself from twisting his chair even more, his knees settling on either side of Bones’s, while he pulled Bones forward instead. Bracketing Bones’s cheeks with his hands, he pressed a kiss against Bones’s mouth, a clear declaration of intent. He would definitely be kissing Bones again, it said. As early and often as Bones would allow it.

When Bones growled low in his throat as Jim tried to pull back, Jim took it as a sign that Bones wouldn’t mind early and often in the slightest.

Bones tasted like the scotch he’d barely drank and a little bit like the replicated garlic they’d had with dinner and right now Jim couldn’t imagine anything better than that, wanted nothing more than to keep chasing that flavor for the rest of the night.

So he did—or put in his very best effort at it. In any case, he wasn’t at all sure how long they were at it when they finally stopped.

Marks showed up when you first met your soulmate, so when they parted for air, Jim’s lips tingling from the light graze of Bones’s stubble against his mouth and jaw, Jim wasn’t surprised when no swirling, delicate discolorations showed on his wrist to confirm what his heart already knew. That didn’t stop him from being disappointed anyway. And Bones noticed, wrapped his fingers around Jim’s wrist and tugged at toward him, covering the spot where that proof would have gone.

“Hey.” He squeezed at Jim’s tendons and along the protrusion of bone on the outside of his hand and pressed his mouth against Jim’s pulse point. His breath ghosted across Jim’s skin. The warmth of it lingered. “This shit right doesn’t matter. _You_ matter. And anyway, biology’s not always _right_. We’re us. Far as I’m concerned, that trumps these things. I don’t need a glorified tattoo to tell me I’m supposed to care about you.”

It formed a brand that no one could see, those words, the ferocity of them, but even though the words left no concrete evidence behind, Jim would’ve sworn they felt as real as what he’d always imagined a mark would. Jim wondered at the sensation, reveled in it. For the first time ever, it didn’t matter that he lacked this one thing.

What Bones said? How he felt? How _Jim_ felt? It was enough.

Truly, it was all finally enough.


End file.
